Illegal logging and unchecked economic development are taking a devastating toll on the forests of Vietnam and neighboring countries, threatening areas of biodiversity so rich that 1,700 species have been discovered in the last 15 years alone.READ MORE

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Railway carriages loaded with logs stop at a train station in the central province of Quang Binh, Vietnam. The five countries in the greater Mekong region — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar — have lost a third of their forest cover in the past few decades. The conservation group WWF said that if current rates of deforestation continue, by 2030 "only 14 percent of the greater Mekong's remaining forests will consist of contiguous habitat capable of sustaining viable populations of many wildlife species." (AFP/Getty Images)

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Photographer Robert Wintner documents the exquisite beauty and biodiversity of Cuba’s coral reefs, which are largely intact thanks to stifled coastal development in the communist nation. View the gallery.

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The Warriors of Qiugang, a Yale Environment 360 video, chronicles a Chinese village’s fight against a polluting chemical plant. It was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
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